Short Story: The Attic at the End of the World

There comes a point in every apocalypse when everyone must ask themselves what the real price of survival is and whether it’s worth it. That point arrived for me about five minutes in. Crammed into my attic with the spiders, my cats and more bottled water than an environmentalist would approve of – which I admit, was not a masterpiece of planning on my part – I had nothing much to do but contemplate existence. I’d already gone through the blind panic stage, you see. That’s how I ended up in the attic with my cats and the water. And the perishables from my fridge. And some pot noodles. Which I can’t boil up.

Anyway, it was in those first four minutes in the dark of the attic breathing in the strange smells of a part of my house I’d never been in, all stale air and strange drafts and resin-y, woody oddness that I learned that true terror waxes and wanes. Like a moon. Or human existence on the planet. Although with that last one we didn’t so much wane as…well. You know.

The signs were all there. We even noticed them too. There was lots of chatter online. Articles were written; some of them were even true. Pundits talked. Argued. Issued apologies. Retracted apologies. Officials made statements. Press conferences were held daily. Influencers sold branded survival kits. It was all going on. But the slow slide toward Armageddon was a little on the quiet side.

A lot of whimpers, not so many bangs. Everyone had been expecting the bangs, see. What with the war. The epidemics. The state of the economy. Everyone knew we were headed for the skids. But when it happened it was so much like everything else people just got on with their lives. We’d all learned to live around the edges of disaster. We’d been doing it so long by that point.

Thinking about it, the big problem was that no one could imagine that this would be it. The real, proper end. We’d gotten used to living on the edge of destruction; I think we thought we’d always scrape on by. Still. We probably should have reacted faster to the ooze. And that thing with the eyeballs. In fact, definitely that thing with the eyeballs. That was just weird. And awful. I saw it happen in the supermarket. The eyeball thing. In the fruit aisle. Pop-squish, just like that all over the bananas.

It is frankly amazing how quickly you can get used to exploding eyeballs. I’d say it was horrifying, and probably, the internet’s fault. Most things are, after all. But the truth is I think it’s human nature. We survive, we adapt, we conquer, we multiply. Until we don’t.

No one was really surprised that the big finish for mankind was manmade. Who else was going to do us in, aliens? No, humanity was always going to be our own ruin. But it wasn’t the icecaps melting or the rainforests burning that did for us. That’s why we didn’t quite see the danger in front of us. I mean, how could we? It was all so unlikely.

At least that was the conclusion I came to in the final minute of the first five minutes of the apocalypse. Or, my personal apocalypse anyway. I don’t know what’s going on outside. I don’t know if there’s been a proper announcement. An “abandon all hope” sort of thing. There’s stuff going on below me, in the streets. I can hear that well enough. It might be ooze related. It had got into the waterworks last I heard. But it might not be. The apocalypse is multifaceted. Like an unholy amorphous squid of death and destruction. I mean that literally. That’s what happened in Liverpool.

The cats aren’t happy, but then neither am I. I’m afraid to die but the thought of facing what’s out there’s worse. I’ve come up here to die. I can admit it. A slow, isolated death is what I thought I wanted when I scrambled up the ladder, flailing about and whacking my knees and funny bone. It seemed like a good exit at the time.

My cats will probably eat me once I’ve starved or dehydrated to death. I should probably let them out. I think if any creature could survive this to inherit the Earth it’s the domestic shorthair. But I’m too afraid to move. Things make noises in here. I don’t know what they are. Some of it is pipework, I think. I didn’t think to cut off any of the utilities before scurrying up here. Didn’t see the point. There might be ooze in the pipes. There probably is. It’s everywhere else, after all.

What was that? Shattered glass. It sounded close. There’s a lot of shouting. It sounds really bad. Even the cats have shut up. I’m scared. The terror’s back, full wax. I don’t want to die. I liked my stupid little life. I like my eyeballs. I like the world. My thoughts are splintered. I’ve gone all Walt Whitman in fear. My brain contains endless contradictions. There’s no one going to come and save me and that makes me want to chew my own fingers off. But I’m equally petrified that someone will come. That I’ll be found, hiding here in the big empty dark of my attic. I forgot to bring the cat food and that – of all things – makes me cry.

I do it silently. I’ve seen the news. I’m afraid of what’s out there. Because the end was people, you see. And not even in the obvious way. This isn’t war. At least, not any sort that the army could deal with. They got outplayed, see. They didn’t know the rules of engagement. Well, the squaddies probably did. The higher ups not so much.

Oh, please. Oh, no. The broken glass. It was the back door. The glass one leading to the postage stamp patio and the cat-run I call a garden. I can hear movement in my house. I live alone. They’re here. At least someone is. More than one someone. Impossible to say if they’ve got their eyeballs.

Oh, No. No. No. No. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. I’ve been a coward all my life. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I spook easily. My imagination’s too quick; it’s the most active part of me and it’s showing me everything now. The intruders in my house, going room to room downstairs. My house isn’t big. Just a two-up, two-down and a single bathroom. And the attic with its completely obvious hatch in the ceiling. A hatch that even one of the Popped could see, I reckon, because I made a complete hash of getting up here. Least I had the sense to haul the ladder up with me and lay it across the hatch.

I wish I could just die, right now, explode my own heart with stress and check out early. I don’t want to be here. I’m scared. What am I supposed to do? There’s nothing to do is there? This is the end. It’s meant to be the end. It should be the end. But that’s the problem with the end. It’s not finished. Not yet. I want it over. I don’t want to be here. I’m scared. But I’m so afraid of it ending. Of me ending.

I’ve seen all the horrible ways the end has come for others. The internet was full of it. So many people filmed it. Hash-tag “Game Over” was everywhere, like it was some joke. Or a horrifying new trend that would die down along with its followers. No one really believed it would come for the rest of us.

There are definitely people in my house. They’re making noise. The floorboards beneath me are creaking. Someone just went in my bathroom. There’s this particularly creaky floorboard in there where the floor dips and groans a bit. I don’t hear voices. But I wouldn’t if its some of them. The Gamers. The helmets eat their voices. Only those in the ‘Zone’ can hear each other talk.

What will they do when they find me? And find me they will. Gamers know how to clear a level. They know how to find you out in every nook and cranny. Oh, sweet mercy. Shut up, cat! Don’t meow at the hatch. Please. Shut. Up. I’ll let you out once they’re gone, I promise. Don’t get me killed, Tom.

When everything was still just a crisis and everyone thought we’d limp through it like we had all the other crises, the news broadcast stories about Game Overs. Sometimes they filmed special forces going after the Gamers. I heard there was footage online of a few of them getting de-helmeted. I didn’t watch. I’d already seen a Pop-Squish. I didn’t want to see anymore. The helmets, once on, don’t come off, see. Gamers are all in the Zone. The ooze sustains them. No one figured out how in time to do anything about it. The developers were the first victims, see. A case of the ‘Author is Dead’ we really should have been more worried about. Because the game went on. And it got bigger.

I think they’re in the spare bedroom. I don’t know what they’re doing in there. It’s not an interesting room. I doubt there are any power ups to be had. Maybe that will be my salvation? My house is too boring to have any loot drops. The Gamers will leave. I’ll let the cats out, sneak downstairs and drink some bleach or something. Or find some medicine that will kill me gently. I don’t know.

I wish this was over. I wish someone would save me. I wish I could just turn off and let go and vanish without a thought. I’m scared. I’m so scared. I don’t know how to fight back. I don’t want to fight back. I want to go downstairs with my cats. I want the real world back with all its ignorable problems. But that’s all gone now. Only the Game remains.

There’s a lot of noise below me. They’re dragging furniture over the carpet into the hall under the hatch. The cats flee to the far corners of the attic. I’m sorry Tom. I’m sorry Molly. I should have let you run when you had the chance. But I wanted to cling on, see. I wanted to hold on tight to the old world. The real world. I wanted to keep it alive the way it’s supposed to be until the end. That was selfish of me. Now I’ve killed them too.

I can’t see anything but dancing spots of gloom in the dark. My eyesight is like snow on an old analogue TV. It breaks up and nothing is there. But my ears and imagination fill in for my eyes. The ladder in the middle of the floor is juddering. The trapdoor is rattling. Someone is pushing it from below. This is it. The end.

I wish I wasn’t so afraid. I wish I could say I’d tried. But I wasn’t built for survival horror. I wasn’t designed for this. Goodbye Tom. Goodbye Molly. I love you and I’m sorry.

The ladder judders again, once, twice, thrice. It bounces away. The trapdoor pops open. I see the bright red laser-pointer guiding light on top of a helmet. It skewers me right between the eyes. I huddle against the wall. I duck my head and cover my face. I hear two words:

“Game Over.”

Short Story – The Manchurian Sacrifice

Outside the bedroom window the doppler-wail of sirens screamed pass and brakes screeched as unmarked police cars careened around the corner. Mathilde heard the heavy, air-cutting whop-whop of a police chopper’s rotor blades from somewhere above her fourth floor safe house and paused in the process of applying her foundation.

The lights were low in the flat, the heavy curtain pulled almost closed, allowing only a hint of the chaos outside to seep in with the muggy, mid-summer air. Ninety minutes ago, the ambassador was murdered at a diamond tiara and black tux affair in the political heart of the city. The perpetrator was still at large.

But not for long. Mathilde looked down at the array of make-up spread out before her in disgust. All of it was department brand only, in a myriad shades of bland with the occasional splash of humdrum thrown in for added spice. The make-up belonged to Melanie. So too did the off-the rack party dress hanging from its hanger on the back of the wardrobe. A hideous thing, it looked like someone had beheaded and plucked the top half of an ostrich, while leaving the bottom fully feathered before applying silver sequins to the torso. Mathilde would sooner slit her own throat than wear it.

She clenched her fists. That was the point though, wasn’t it? Mathilde wouldn’t be wearing it. Melanie would. Stupid, bubble-head Melanie stumbling home from a work’s party with her hair in last season’s style, her face spattered in department store beauty and her backside waggling in feathered delight. God damn Melanie Tumbridge, orthodontic nurse, depressed singleton; a woman who had never travelled further than a trip to Sharm El Sheikh. A woman who spoke only English, and only just. A woman who could barely raise a hand to a spider let alone swat a diplomat straight off the mortal coil.

Melanie was her antithesis. Her nemesis. She was everything Mathilde despised in this world. And yet they had never met. Nor would they ever meet. It was impossible. Like a couple of cursed Gemini twins, she and Melanie were two minds trapped in one body, doomed to exist as nothing more than distorted reflections of the other.

According to the Division, this was the best way to protect operatives and prevent exposure. How could anyone hope to catch a killer who could cease to exist? No polygraph could catch out Melanie. Facial recognition technology could not account for two women with one face who shared not a single facial expression in common. Mathilde left not fingerprints, no traces, but even if she had it wouldn’t matter. DNA might be all but infallible, but the human mind was not. It was easy to fool a mind to disbelieve the eyes when confronted by a pudding like Melanie Tumbridge. Melanie would never crack under interrogation; never slip up. Because she could not slip. As far as she knew she had a full life of blah-blah-blah, don’t-forget-to-floss to account for every hour of her day.

Slowly, Mathilde breathed out, unclenching her balled fists. She flexed her fingers, encouraging blood flow. It did no good to get upset. Reaching up to unclasp the elegant tear-drop diamond necklace from around her neck she pooled the platinum chain in her palm, stroking a fingertip over the cool stone.

This was her seventeenth successful liquidation for the Division. She’d gouged out her legend from Barcelona to Bila Tservka, Phnom Penh to Perth, and criss-crossed the globe back again. She was the best. The diamond of the Division.

And yet, they thought nothing of erasing her.

Restless, Mathilde stood. The bedroom of the safe house was made up to look lived-in and was used by any operative who needed a bolthole in the city. It looked like a room someone could live in and maybe even like it. But not Mathilde. She had no home. She’d lived out of a suitcase since she was eighteen. A creature of purest utility, the Division had taken her and whittled down her softer edges until all that remained was something flat and hard and sharp enough to cut.

Was that why they’d made Melanie so fluffy? Melanie who wore a purple feather boa to a friend’s party unironically. Melanie who had a tasselled counterpane on her bed in her alarmingly aquamarine bedroom with its flat-pack white painted dressing table and backlit mirror covered in failed selfies. Melanie with her love of sour cream and onion flavour crisps and freezer aisle lasagne. Melanie. Melanie. Melanie. Why was it that her life with all its clutter and needless distractions filled Mathilde’s head even before the switch?

Mathilde paced between the bed and the door, on the far side from the window. She beat her right fist into her left palm, the diamond chain still around her wrist. If only she could pulp Melanie’s memory so easily.

It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Melanie was supposed to be the airhead armour that kept Mathilde safe. Melanie was meant to be the cipher. The pretender to the air they both breathed, and the life Mathilde owned. So why was it growing harder to escape her fluffy clutches every time Mathilde emerged from the Deep Sleep? 

‘It could be that increased duration increases the risk of false memory saturation,’ Jose had suggested the one and only time Mathilde had mentioned it after the job in Taipei. She’d had to go under as Melanie for nine months that time. Her revival had felt like a bad birth; she’d emerged into the light blinking Melanie out of her eyes, the memory of the bubble-head’s terrified pleading still ringing in her ears.

‘Why are you doing this to me? Let me go. I don’t want to die.’

Stupid Melanie. She couldn’t die. She wasn’t real. And yet…she felt real.

‘Naturally,’ Jose replied. ‘Deep Covers are meant to provide a fully immersive experience, or what’s the point?’ The technician had tossed the spent hypodermic into the medical waste bin.

Mathilde had watched him do it, thinking that everything she was had been condensed into that syringe. What did it say about Mathilde that she was the toxic agent that needed to be inserted to be brought back? Exactly who was the cover and who was the real person; the woman who died after every successful mission or the woman who lived in-between? 

Mathilde glanced at the digital radio on the bedside table –an old-fashioned thing without a connection to Wi-Fi. She was running out of time. She was expected at the rendezvous point in forty minutes. From there she’d be taken to one of the Deep Sites dotted around the city. Jose or another almost identical lab drone would sit her down, swab her arm and prepare to put her under. Another job done. Another small death as a reward.

What if she ran? Like a bullet from a gun, the thought tore a path through her mind. What if she ran and never stopped running? What if this time she didn’t consent to lie down and die to protect the Division? What if this time she lived and used what they’d taught her to spring from one hotel room to another, to dance across borders, to hew too close to enemy lines? She was the Division’s diamond, but to their enemies she was more precious than that.

Ridiculous. The Division was everywhere. It had its fingers in everything. Mathilde knew how it was. She’d seen behind the curtain. There was no escaping. And why would she want to? What life was out there for her, if not this one? A life like Melanie’s, full of banal pleasures and friendships with people who had no idea she was an empty vessel? Mathilde might have no one, but she had herself and her skills; her peephole into the world behind the curtain. Why would she give that up and risk death?

To live, a little voice whispered in her head. It wasn’t Melanie. The Happy Tooth Fairy wasn’t astute enough to realise Mathilde existed. The treacherous voice belonged to Mathilde, which only made it worse. Like a diamond, she was in danger of fracturing. Her fatal flaw exposed.

She twirled around the room, Melanie’s stupid dress fluttering around her backside. The tote bag with the needle mocked her from the dresser. The bag was Melanie’s. It had a pattern of cherries on it. Mathilde scraped the blunt nails of her hand over her palm, nipping her bottom lip hard enough to bleed. The weak, salt tang of blood was sour on her tongue.

Mathilde had her orders. Inject the contents of the syringe, head to the rendezvous; go to the Deep Site. Die so Melanie could live. Wait until the next time the Division needed its diamond agent.

Rinse and repeat.

Mathilde reached down to brush her fingers through the poofy feathers of Melanie’s dress. The other woman’s thoughts were seeping into her brain. Gemma would be at the party; she could ask her about Layla and Collette’s new baby and coo and ooh over pictures of tiny, wrinkled walnut people to her heart’s content.

She might call Iain; try and patch things up. Explain her odd disappearing acts. Maybe she and her friends would talk about the tailbacks and roadblocks caused by the assassination? Or maybe Melanie wouldn’t care about trivial matters of international espionage. Because Melanie had a life. A life that didn’t start and end with murder.

Mathilde frowned, swiftly reaching up to brush wetness from her face. Tears? Mathilde hadn’t cried for real since completing basic training. What was this? Had the Melanie-rot spread so far, so fast? She shivered, breathing through the hitch in her throat. There must be a glitch in the programming. She’d tell Jose and— The burner phone on the bed rang exactly twice. Mathilde flinched. It was time. She had to go. She was already late.

She swept up the tote bag, dug out the needle, prepped it with practiced, sure hands –and set about performing her second murder of the night. The drug hitting her blood stream was cool, soothing, washing away all regret and leaving only clarity.

It was almost a relief. Death was easy, after all. Mathilde understood it. It was all she understood. She’d leave the living to her enemy. Melanie was better at it. And then, after yet another bloody birth, she might finally have the strength to fix her broken whole.

Haunt Anthology – Out Now

My short story One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile Teeth is featured in Haunt anthology from Dragon Soul Press available on Amazon. Below is an extract from One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile teeth.

They say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But you say bollocks to that, don’t you Cheryl? You’ve never had much time for kings. Nor men, for that matter. And seeing? Well, the blind don’t know how lucky they are.

Your problem’s always been the same. You’ve always seen too much. You see it all. The twisted bodies of the sprites that jump from tree branch to tree branch in a storm. The faces in the wind and the shadows at the periphery of the brightest day. You see the darkness and the darkness sees you.

But you managed. For years, you managed. You were nimble, you were tough; you saw it all and you asked no questions. Monkey sees, but Monkey don’t talk. You survived. You thrived. You were the one-eyed queen in the dark.

You cleaned house for the monsters, learning the lesson of every soul that’s ever been weak amid the strong and the mean; when you can’t fight and you can’t run, be useful. And you were. When wicked old Mr. Watkins guilt came for him, you were there, wiping the tiny finger trails off the windowpanes and ignoring the way the condensation ran like tears.

You spritzed and you squirted, you wiped it all away, but the fingers lingered, scraping invisible patterns over the pane as you turned your back.

When the shadows in the room sniffled and pawed at the smudgy walls, when the reek of ammonia and terror clogged your nose, you whipped out the polish until the room smelled like an orange grove in Andalucía. You scrubbed the walls until they shone like ivory. You swept trapped sobs from between the slats of the Venetian blinds and let them drift as dust to the carpet before you got the Dyson out.

When the cupboard doors rattled in the toy maker’s workshop, you kept your head down and never opened the doors. You never looked into the weeping eyes of all those little wind-up boys and girls with their too life-like faces. ‘Cuz you knew what you’d see.  But nothing gets the stink of evil out of the air, does it, Cheryl? Nor stops fear from leaking into the floorboards or terror from rising up the walls like black rot.

Though you surely tried, didn’t you?

If you would like to read more of my work you can find my horror-fantasy short story collection The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear on Amazon

Short Story – It Happened on a Tuesday

It Happened On A Tuesday

On Tuesday 4^th, Clive Screed woke up with a headache. Suze was still sleeping so he slipped out of bed and ambled to the bathroom to go through his usual motions before heading to work.

Clive had worked at Cordon and Bloom Accountancy for twenty years; he liked to joke that he was a lifer. He ran several blue-chip accounts and would’ve made the upper echelons of management if he’d possessed an iota of ambition. Instead, Clive possessed a much rarer gift, loyalty, and satisfaction in his work. He was a mainstay of the office; a touchstone for the company and an easy-going mentor for the junior staff. People liked Clive and Clive liked people.

This Tuesday was different. Clive had taken an aspirin before starting his commute to work but it hadn’t worked. The hysteria-tinged prattle of the radio announcer aggravated his headache as he joined the wind of traffic on the ring-round circling the town. Clive’s favourite station had given over most of its air-time not to the golden oldies Clive liked best, but to some drivel about a new strain of virus spreading around the country; Clive paid very little attention. It seemed to him that everyone now-a-days was a hypochondriac. He was forced to change station and this break to his contented routine further aggravated the drilling pain in his head.

He, therefore, entered the office at ten minutes past nine in an uncharacteristically bad mood, ignoring the usual round of half-heartedly cheery greetings from staff members pleased to see him but less pleased to be at work on a Tuesday morning. Clive tried to summon his usual joie-de-vivre while he checked his emails but an odd lethargy dragged at his mind, deflating his spirits. At ten-fifteen he almost cursed when the printer jammed and he caught himself glowering at Julie over the cubicle partition when she coughed too loudly. He was quite surprised and ashamed of himself. 

At a quarter past two, Clive was startled awake at his desk. This was shocking for two reasons, firstly, in twenty years Clive had worked at Cordon and Bloom he had never, ever dozed off at his desk and secondly, Julie was screaming.

Clive lumbered to his feet, limbs heavy and uncoordinated. He looked for Julie. Her cubicle next to his was a state. There was blood all over her monitor. Her keyboard dangled over the desk edge, hanging by its cable. Her swivel chair was out in the aisle. Clive tutted under his breath. He detested mess.

This was unfortunate as it appeared that the office had become a shambles while he was snoozing. There were papers everywhere. Cubicle partitions had been ripped from between desks and flung around hither and thither. Someone had planted their bloody handprints all over the off-white walls and Tim-the-intern appeared to be lying in the middle of reception in a pool of his own blood. Clive blinked in surprise, this just wasn’t the sort of behaviour one expected from Cordon and Bloom.

At least Julie had stopped screaming, which was a relief to Clive and some comfort to his aching head. He stumbled upon her body next to junior partner Aaron Carruther’s cubicle, she too appeared to have taken to lying on the floor in a very dishevelled state. Belatedly, he realised she was dead and took a moment to be shocked by that.

Aaron crouched over Julie, blood and drool spilling from his mouth. He yowled at Clive like an angry cat when he saw him, foamy spittle flying from his lips.

Clive reeled back in alarm. He hadn’t thought Aaron the type to go around eating co-workers.

Aaron lunged for Clive’s ankles and Clive fell back into Ranjit’s desk. He grabbed hold of the back of Ranjit’s swivel chair and slammed it into Aaron’s body as the younger man lurched at him. Aaron was not a fit man. He fell backwards, arse-over-tea-kettle as the saying goes. Clive dragged himself up and hurried toward the main doors.

It would be inaccurate to say that forty-three-year-old Clive ran from the office because forty-three-year-old Clive hadn’t done any running since his five-a-side footie team had disbanded when Jerry North went and immigrated to Australia (the lucky bastard). He gave it a good try though.

Rambling down the communal corridor in the office complex Cordon and Bloom shared with a photography studio and a dentist, he lurched drunkenly off walls and into the copier, before pausing briefly and cocking an ear to the screams issuing through the door to Doctor Chakraborty’s surgery. The door was locked and when banging his fist on the frosted glass pane failed to hail anyone Clive reluctantly moved on.

Clive did not meet anyone on the lower floors of the complex. There was evidence that someone had had a bit of a spill; Clive’s sensible black leather shoes sloshed deep into the blood-soaked shag outside Rogers Consultancy on the ground floor. Confused and vaguely concerned at the number of bloody accidents going on in the building, Clive fumbled his way out of the buildings glass doors.

The comfort of the quietude the abandoned office block afforded Clive was lost the instant he stumbled outside. There was a lot of noise and fuss, someone was yelling over a loudspeaker and some fool had put up cordons and police barricades all around the pedestrian plaza. That was just not on, in Clive’s opinion. The plaza was hazardous enough, what with fountain jets set into the ground and the European market setting up shop in the middle of the thoroughfare. The last thing anyone needed was for some jobsworth to turn the plaza into a literal obstacle course of cordons and sandbags and police tape.

Clive had reached the limit of his patience, which was his only excuse for roughly knocking over the cordon and lurching into the plaza. A low, guttural growl escaped him when he saw the broken glass, shattered market stalls and detritus of German sausages, French baguettes and peculiar knick-knacks strewn over the ground. Not to mention the corpses. Really what was all that about? Clive wondered. Since when was it acceptable to leave corpses all over the place? What did he pay his taxes for if the council couldn’t even keep litter and corpses off the streets? It was disgraceful.

Clive was not the only person left to fumble their way toward the distant barricade, a good number of rather unsightly looking ne’er-do-wells were shambling about, bouncing off litter bins and falling over benches. Some of them appeared to be picking at the corpses or fighting one another in a slow and disorganized manner. Clive wondered if these louts were responsible for all the mess.

He avoided the lot of them, ambling along the line of cordons toward the hub of noise and activity on the other side. The voice over the loudspeaker continued to blear out, but the voice was too distorted for Clive to understand. He fixed on the people – normal, unbloodied people—he could see on the other side of the thicket of sandbags, armed police and parked police cars forming a barricade in the middle of the plaza. What was going on here? Clive asked himself. It looked like a scene from one of those disaster movies Suze liked to watch.

Clive was sliding along the outer wall of the abandoned Japanese restaurant, edging closer to the nearest group of officers when one of them yelled and raised his gun. Clive rocked to a halt. A nice, urban lower-middle-class Englishman, Clive had never seen a real rifle before, let alone heard one fired. He fell over in shock, quite winded and unsettled by the whole affair. What the buggery was going on? Why was the police shooting at him? 

Had the whole world gone mad while he was napping?

Clive dragged himself away, frightened and scared. He took refuge in the narrow alley between the bank and the bakery where the winos liked to congregate. They weren’t there now. No one was. Clive slumped against the wall and sobbed. His v-neck jumper was all stained and bloody. His left leg shook uncontrollably, his foot bouncing over the concrete. Out in the plaza, the rat-tat-tat of gunfire and the bellowing of the voice over the loudspeaker merged into an incomprehensible cacophony that made Clive’s head hurt abominably. Above the buildings a helicopter whoop-whooped by.

Clive wasn’t sure how long he sat in the alley, surrounded by blood and the stench of stale urine. Time cycled by in a blur of muted sensation. The sound of helicopter rota blades slicing and dicing the air; the staccato bursts of gunfire; the distant roar of jeeps and truck motors; the occasional scream and the sharp, bright tinkle of shattering glass  — all of it overlaid by the blearing of loudspeakers.

It grew dark and it occurred to him that he needed to find Suze.

The plaza was a different place when he dragged himself out of the alley. There were a lot more rough-looking types shambling about, growing more aggressive now the sun had set. The barricade at the end of the plaza had been abandoned and all the storefronts sported broken windows and gutted displays. It was like the office all over again, all the order and civility of the town had fallen to ruin while Clive’s back was turned.

Charlemagne Boulevard was deserted; tire marks scoured the asphalt and concrete blocks had been placed over two traffic lanes, preventing cars from coming into the town centre. Clive saw the swirling flash of blue and white police lights further along the boulevard and approached the police car cautiously. The police had fired on him, a law-abiding citizen, but as a law-abiding citizen, it was still encoded in Clive to seek a policeman’s aid.

He was disappointed to find the car abandoned, the blood on the driver’s seat already dried. He moved off, feet slow and dragging. He was so blasted tired that was the problem. He couldn’t think right. Everything was topsy-turvy and his head would not stop aching. It was all wrong. Everything. All wrong.

He needed to get home to Suze; that was it. That was the answer. She’d be worried about him. He was probably late home. He hoped she had dinner on. He was hungry. Filled with a raw, empty hunger that opened in the pit of his stomach like a fissure and threatened to hollow him out. That’s how he felt, he realised. Hollow, like a gutted building. He was nothing but a façade of a man with all his vital bits missing.

Clive stumbled to a stop. He would be the first to admit he was not what one would call a deep thinker by nature. It wasn’t his way to question too much the why and the wherefore of anything. Life was for living, he always said, everything else will sort itself out in time. It was a bit odd for him to be getting all poetic, but he supposed he’d earned the right to get a bit maudlin, what with the day he’d had.

He mopped his brow with a limp hand, disgusted by the drool clinging to his lax chin. He must be coming down with something, he reasoned. He was all out-of-sorts. He had to stop outside the offy on Milden Avenue to collect himself. He picked up a packet of tissues but found Agnieszka indisposed and unable to take his money. He left the correct change on the counter and hoped her son would be along soon to pick up her body. It looked like some rotten soul had already taken a couple of bites out of her.

Clive picked up the pace as he passed by the primary school on Teft Street; he didn’t want to look.

The streets were so quiet. Clive had the ants up the spine feeling of eyes watching him from behind broken windows or shadowed garden corners, but he saw no one. The distant scream of sirens in other parts of the town came to him over the still air the only hint that anyone survived. 

Someone had driven a white van into the side of Mrs. Marchants’ house at the top of the street. Another car smouldered further down the way and Clive would be worried about the engine blowing, what with the flames he could see dancing under the bonnet and the audible crackle and pop of melting glass and tires were he not so hungry. It was all he could think about. That and Suze.

Suze and her Sunday roasts, her fat dripping potatoes and the way she melted the cheese on top of the shepherd’s pie just the way he liked, creating a little patina of golden-orange cheesy goodness on top. He started to salivate. He did love his Suze, what with her big hips and ample bosom. She wasn’t fast-moving his Suze, a bit clumsy all told. He hoped no one had gotten to her. He was so very, very hungry.

He slipped around the back of the house, entering through the passage that ran between his house and the neighbours and led to the back garden gate. The kitchen door was less secure than the front. He was so hungry he didn’t want to have to fuss around breaking in through the front window. What would the neighbours think?

He found Suze in the upstairs bathroom, cowering in the bathtub behind the shower curtain. She was in a right state. Screaming and crying hysterically when she saw him. He reached for her and she threw the shampoo bottle at his head.

Well, that was a fine to-do, wasn’t it? A man braves life and limb to get home to his wife and this is his welcome? A spark of anger lit inside him, causing his hunger to surge.

Suze wept and begged as he dragged her out of the bath. Her screaming and sobbing drove a spike of agony into his brain, jagged and rough. He couldn’t bear it. The incessant drilling in his head and the raw wound in his stomach combined in a crescendo of pain. Pain that only stopped when he took his first bite.

***

Interested in reading more weird and wonderful tales of monsters eating people? Check out The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear available now on Amazon, a collection of urban fantasy/horror short stories my yours truly.

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear – Extract

The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear And Other Stories of Chilling Modern Horror Fantasy is a collection of ten horror/urban fantasy short stories available to buy on Amazon here. Below is an extract from one of the featured stories Thou Shalt Not Suffer.

Thou Shalt Not Suffer

‘I can’t do this anymore.’
There is a room in darkness; the only light the blazing flicker of a TV screen, HD colours reaching out from beyond the liquid crystal display. There is an armchair in the room drawn up close to the TV. There is a cat and a terrarium with a big warty toad crouched on a smooth stone, regal as a dragon. There is a woman. She strokes the cat, her eyes glued to the TV. She is smiling a rictus grin.
*

‘This was a mistake.’
She can smell the gas. Her wrists and ankles are strapped. There is a strap across her chest and banding her forehead. She cannot move. The ceiling is very white like an operating theatre. The walls are clear ceiling to floor Plexi-glass. The gas is coming from vents in the ceiling. There are other holes in the floor. She cannot see them because she is strapped to a stretcher in the middle of the room but she knows they are there. The flames will come from the vents in the floor.
Tears leak, steady as a tap, down her face. They tickle as they wriggle past her earlobes. She is numb with terror. Panic mounts. She thinks she could pull loose of her body and float like a helium balloon to the ceiling. She wishes that she would.

She cannot turn her head but movement flickers in her peripheral vision. Beyond the windows people are taking seats in the auditorium outside the tiny glass room. The prosecuting lawyers. The Pontiff’s representative. The witchhunters. Keith’s family.

How many people are out there? How many people are going to watch her burn?

Her sobs are muffled by the thick leather mask covering her lower face. The metal grill allows her to breathe and makes her look like Hannibal Lector. They put a sack over her head when they wheeled her in through the baying crowds outside but the witchhunters removed it when they installed her in the room. They want her to see the gas ripple in the air. They want her to see when the room explodes in flame.

*

You can read the rest of Thou Shalt Not Suffer in The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear

Short Story – The Night Storyteller

You heard of the Bleckker Estate? You must’ve done. Everyone knows it. Mind, not many talk about it, but that’s the Bleckker for you. It’s known. There’s a language of silence, see. A knowledge that transmits without words. You know the Bleckker. You know it the way you know when the creak on the stairs isn’t just the house settling or when you walk into an empty room that’s not so empty. Lizard brain stuff this is. Creeps and chills wisdom. You know the Bleckker. Everyone does.

Big ugly concrete tower block it is. Slab-like and ridged with these outer walkway’s that run on each floor like runnels of shadow. There’s this square patch of scrubland in front of it. Was meant to be a play park when there were plans to fling up more towers on the other three sides of the patch. But after Bleckker One went up no one dared build another. They knew, you see, even them hoity-toity architect types. They knew what they’d done and they ran from it.

Bleckker casts a long shadow. Bleeds them it does. The grass grows on the patch, certainly. It grows high enough to whisper in the shadows. Grows high enough to swallow the trollies and fridges tossed in there. It grows green and grey. It grows thistles and blackberries. Nasty, sour little bunches of berries that splat on the concrete siding like dollops of blood. The birds don’t eat them. The magpies and blackbirds fly right on passed. There was on owl once, someone told me. It didn’t last long.

I suppose you could call Bleckker an oasis. Sitting out there all on its own at the arse end of Creekstone Road. Just a tower and its green. Lots of space to spread its shadow. There’s no graffiti on the walls of Bleckker. And what with the grass hiding so much, it could almost be called tidy. Mind, you’d have to be pretty stupid to call Bleckker anything ‘cept evil. But it takes all sorts to make a world, don’t it?

You’re probably thinking, alright that’s all fine and spooky-like, excellent scene-setting and all that, but what’s actually going on there? Why get all het up about some Sixties tower block and an overgrown green, eh? There’s real problems happening in the world, you might say. Give us the tea or shut up already.

That’s fair. That is. No one’s making you listen to me. Evil comes in lots of different shapes and sizes. Some are flashier than others. But predation, see. That’s subtle. The predator needs to lie down with the lamb in this day and age. The parasite needs a certain symbiosis with its host to survive. For a while at least. What does symbiosis mean? Look it up. It’ll improve your mind. Where was I? Yes. I was talking about the subtle predator, nibbling at life’s edges, wasn’t I? Well, there was none better at people-nibbling than Mr. Armand. Him what lived – in a fashion – on the Bleckker’s thirteenth floor. Kept his curtains drawn during the day and only slunk out his door at night. Don’t know him? You will when I’m done. Trust me. The lizard brain knows when the hunter is near. Got a shiver, there? Well, it’s a cold, dark night.

Anyway. I’m not telling you about Mr. Armand, yet. He can wait his turn. They were all like him anyway. Them that lived on the Bleckker Estate. And those that weren’t were damned. You see, Bleckker’s a place for the damned. They don’t know it. The damned never do. That’s sort of the point. Lying down with the lion never works well for the lamb.

Anywhoo. You’re distracting me. I’m trying to explain something important. The thing you’ve got to understand about Bleckker is that there’s no understanding Bleckker. Bleckker’s an instinct. It’s a reaction. The shiver when someone walks over your grave. Bleckker’s the reason you throw a pinch of spilled salt over your shoulder. Bleckker’s the reminder that you don’t own the night.

You’re probably thinking Bleckker don’t sound like a good place to raise a family. You’d be right. But there were some that grew up there. The Bleckker kids. Well. There’s all sorts in a world, aren’t there, and some of them are monsters. Bleckker bred them. With twists in their brains and fey light in their eyes. You’ve probably seen the Bleckker kids ‘round town. They’re the ones you cross the street to avoid while trying to act like you wanted to do that anyway. I know what you’re thinking. You’re very transparent. You’re thinking, big deal, more anti-social yobbos. Whoop-de-do. You get them everywhere. Nothing special about that.

Well, no, there isn’t. But where are you getting the idea evil’s special? Evil’s a disease. It’s boredom gone toxic. It’s rage corkscrewed into despair and spat out as some oik gobbing in your face. But other times, it’s something else. Sometimes it’s the Bleckker kids. They’re all shadows; hollow spaces where hope and promise should be. Silhouette people who breathe entropy. The rot that eats society. Bleckker kids will eat your souls.

Think I’m making this up? Standing under a streetlamp watching the world go by, it’s easy to think you know what’s what. You don’t. You’ve forgotten what the old timers knew. You’ve forgotten who owns the night. It’s a lot, I know. Easy to get lost in it. That’s the point. That’s Bleckker’s thing. The creeping shadow throws you in shade. Blinds you. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever seen Lacy Annie?

She hangs out at the bus stop on the corner of Creekstone around midnight. If you’ve ever driven by, you’ll have seen her. I know you’re not the sort, because you’re still alive, but there are those that stop for her, if you know what I mean? Not a good idea. Lacy Annie? She’s one of the lost ones. Who knows where she was going, once. All I know was that one night, Mr. Armand found her. 

She’s missing a shoe, is our Annie. Her tights are laddered and not in an artful, pay-through-the-nose-for-the-distressed-look way. Her head hangs wrong, but her hairs still pretty. Blonde. Glows like phosphor in the dark. Some people think she’s goth because she wears a choker round her neck. She isn’t and that’s not jewellery. Get close enough and you’ll see. Bits of it flake and when she whips her head around to stare at you with her saucer eyes bright as streetlamps. Then you’ll understand why her head flops like that. Of course, then you’ll be dead. So, probably, you should just take my word for it.

Actually, I should have mentioned Lacy Annie when I was talking about people-nibbling at the estate. Sorry about that. Bleckker’s a black hole. A despair sink. Difficult to separate out all the ways it will suck you dry. 

So anyway, between Lacy Annie and the Bleckker kids, the estate started to get a reputation. Got bad enough that they sent a special constable over there. You know the sort; they wear a sash but aren’t real police. Or maybe they are? Who can tell these days. It’s not like you see police on the beat anymore. You know they don’t even come out for burglaries? Well, that’s probably because they keep losing all their constables in Bleckker’s long grass.

Figured you’d heard about that one. It made the news. Very flashy. Yeah. Without his head and missing his feet. Stuffed in an old fridge. ‘Course I know what happened. I know everything, don’t I? Be pointless telling you this stuff if I didn’t, wouldn’t? I mean, what kind of storyteller goes to this much trouble to be like “Oi, you know about Bleckker?” all mysterious and then doesn’t know anything himself?

What? No. I’m not going to tell you what happened to the special constable. Why? Because you don’t need to know. Some things gain power in the telling and the knowing will leave a hole in your spirit like a cigarette burn. Eat right through you, it will. Just take it from me, losing a head and a pair of feet was the least of what that poor sod had to fear before he died.

Right. Glad we got that settled. So, after the special constable them that are in charge – or think they are – took note. Things had all got a bit much, yeah? Certain people who like to think they know shadows decided that things needed sorting out. Questions were asked, answers demanded. Decisions made.

They started by rounding up the Bleckker kids. Well, how do you think it went? These are walking pits of soulless hunger. ‘Course it went badly. You hear about that children’s home, Greenacre? They sent two of the estate kids there. Yeah. Exactly. Best not to think too hard about it. I know. Like I said. Thinking about it lets the shadows in.

Lacy Annie. Well, they made a good fist of bringing her in. Still botched it badly, mind. But that weren’t all their fault and they did get her to the Crematorium in the end. Burning’s good. Burning works. They’d learn that in the end. But they made one fatal mistake. Them that decide wanted Bleckker dealt with all quiet and hush-hush.

Silly idea. You don’t fight silence with silence and you don’t fight shadows in the dark. Anyone with common sense knows that. Thing is though, you need uncommon sense to fight a shadow and them that have it, they learn to keep to the silence too. Survival reflex. There are them that will burn a witch to please a demon, after all.

So, what do you think they did then? You’re right. That’s exactly what the plonkers did. Went in mob handed, didn’t they? Stormed Bleckker. ‘Course, by that point there weren’t too many people living – and I use the term lightly –on the Bleckker Estate. There was Mr. Ashborn on the ground floor. You may not believe it, but he was almost normal. Ate a lot of rats, which did him no favours, and you don’t want to know what he painted his walls with, but honestly, he weren’t that bad.

You don’t want to know about Celia on the seventh floor. No, really, you don’t. There was a reason she was the only one living on that floor by the end of it all. I imagine it was hard to cope with all that shrieking and wailing. Still, she didn’t go easy. I heard the officers sent to round her up all went deaf. Ruptured eardrums. They were the lucky ones. She spoke to one poor soul. And she spoke true. Grief claimed that one. Dead by her own hand two days later.

Oh, now look. You made me go and talk about Celia, didn’t you? I said I wouldn’t too. Oh well. Celia wasn’t so bad. I’m definitely not telling you about Dave on floor eleven. He had a neighbour for dinner. Hadn’t quite finished by the time the squad charged in. Yes. Chew on that one. Probably should have mentioned him along with Mr. Armand and dear old Lacy Annie, shouldn’t I?

Floors ten and twelve were just sad. See, you got to have prey to have predators, don’t you? That’s how the ecosystem works. The squad didn’t find much trouble there. Didn’t find nothing left to save either. Poor little lambs.

Why am I jumping all about and not telling you everything floor to floor, you ask? Well, who are you to tell me how to tell my own story, eh? Truth is, I forgot what goings on they had on floor four. I know there was something grim. Oh, I remember! That was Philip’s floor. He didn’t have a flat number. Why? Well, strictly speaking he didn’t live in Bleckker. Ghosts don’t, you see. Still, I heard he hurled a fire extinguisher the length of the corridor and smashed the head of a takeaway deliveryman so, clearly, he was a bit territorial all the same. 

Oh, I know. I agree totally. You’d think a fraction of these stories should have raised an eyebrow before now, right? Murder. Cannibalism. Fly-tipping on the patch. Terrible stuff. But that was Bleckker’s magic, see. It kept things neat and contained and anyone drawn into its orbit was damned already. The rest just didn’t care to notice. Why? ‘Cause that’s what you do, isn’t it? In the dark you blind yourself with light. You listen with your ears, but you don’t hear your instincts screaming. Shivering again, mate? Not to worry. I’m sure it’s nothing but night chills.

Floor five had Gary. Gary was a bit much. Messy. Growled a lot. Didn’t like puddles and had awfully hairy hands. Prone to sudden violent outbursts. Especially when he had his teeth embedded in that bloke’s neck. Why didn’t I count Gary among the people-nibblers, you ask? Well, I’d hardly call him a nibbler, would you? More of a gobbler. A render. Tearer. Gnasher, even. Always hungry, our Gary. No surprise there. The squad was lucky with him. I heard they burned Gary right there on the patch. Stuffed him in a fridge and lit the whole thing up. Oh, how Celia screamed. They had a bit of a thing going on, see.

Anyway, that blaze was a precursor, you could say. An omen of things to come if that’s your fancy. But you’re not interested in omens, are you? If you were you’d have asked me about Audrey on the second floor. She liked dolls. Made them herself. You really don’t want to know what she used to stuff them. She could do things with a chicken that ran the gamut from the wondrous to the profane. Thank you, yes. Gamut is a fancy word. I’m cultured as well as all-knowing. I’m just slumming it this evening. Had a bit of bother at home. That’s why I’m here chatting with you.

Now where was I? Yes. Good old Audrey. She didn’t take much effort to take down but they had trouble with her after. Caused a lot of unexpected misfortune, did Audrey. Then she did a bunk when the armoured van taking her who-knows-where crashed into a tree after jumping two lanes of traffic. But that was Audrey in a nutshell. Stuff like that happened a lot when she was around. I suspect it still does. Misery migrates see, and sometimes a lone spark flies free of a fire. Evil’s right hard to catch, but real easy to spread.

But you’re not interested in the nature of evil, are you? You’ve had about enough of my lyrical waxing, I bet. You want me to talk about Mr. Armand, don’t you, now? You’re fiercely interested, am I right? I’ve whetted your appetite with these other tender morsels and now you’re all but salivating for the main course. What’s that? You think I’m going a bit heavy on the metaphors, do you? Well, never you mind. I just believe in being sporting, is all. You could consider this your final warning. Also, I’m getting thirsty. But no matter. We’ve reached the nub of the issue; the deepest darkness at Bleckker’s beating heart.

Mr. Armand’s thirteenth floor.

Now, Mr. Armand, he was one of the very first to move into the Bleckker Estate, back when the developer still had plans to build a happy little concrete community around the patch. If you’ve been paying attention this should tell you all you need to know about Mr. Armand, but as this is my story, I’m going to tell you more anyway.

Mr. Armand could be described as a reclusive gentleman, but still very much a gentlemen. He preferred the nightlife and did not fraternise with the neighbours. He preferred to bring company home with him. Like our Lacy Annie. Or Lovely Amita who lurked in the stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors. Or Pale Luke who was more of a drifter until he fell off the roof. There are some of the opinion that Philip was once a companion of Mr. Armand. For the record, he was not. Mr. Ashborn on the ground floor, however, was. That one was a bit of an embarrassment, honestly. Lacy Annie, Pale Luke and Lovely Amita? They had some class to their bloodless existence right ‘til the end. But there’s no class in eating rats, is there?

Anyway, the squad – what was left of it – all handpicked by those shadow draped decision makers who kept well back from the action – thought they were ready for Mr. Armand. They’d come in daylight. They had silver crucifixes, delicate Stars of David backed with millennia of faith, copies of the Qu’ran in handy dandy fanny packs and canteens of holy water. And of course, ash wood stakes. A lot of them, as it happened. Enough to build a fence. Or kill a vampire a good few times over. They were locked, stocked and ready to rumble, in other words.

They kicked in the door. They ripped down the blood red drapes. They knocked over the Ficus in the corner and found Lacy Annie’s missing shoe under the sofa. They picked the lock on the bedroom door. They trampled native earth into the carpet. They went about looting the wardrobe. One of Mr. Armand’s Italian leather loafers was shot for no discernible reason. Such a waste.

What was that? You detect a distinct shift in my diction, you say? I don’t quite sound myself, you say? Well, how would you know? I’ve yet to introduce myself. Still, well done to you. There’s some sharpness to you after all. It just so happens I’m a long way from my native lands. I’ve picked up a bit of lingo along the way. Helps me fit in. But where was I? Yes. The bedroom.

You need to understand, Mr. Armand’s bedroom was important. Even if it didn’t, in fact, have a bed in it. The room was Mr. Armand’s refuge from the harsh light of day. His inner sanctum. It was where he placed his coffin. I bet you can guess what those jack-booted sods did to that fine bit of craftmanship, can’t you? Too right they smashed it. And they threw the violet pillow out of the window, which, mind you, was no easy feat. Those windows had been nailed shut for years.

Now if you’re clever, you may be thinking so far, so Stoker, but where was Mr. Armand? Was he lurking in the depths of the wardrobe clutching an armadillo? Was he casting a wicked shadow along the walls, while plucking his thumbs? Was he clinging to the ceiling like a giant bat? Or was he forming a body from an assortment of local rodents mind controlled for the purpose so he could fall upon the home invaders in an orgy of bloodshed? Or was he flowing away to safety under the door as a cloud of blood-tinged mist?

The answer to all of that is no. Be sensible. Mr. Armand had done what any sane fellow would do while his neighbours were rounded up and carted away without a warrant and burned to death on the patch below without a by-your-leave. He’d scarpered down the hall as soon as he’d heard boots on the stairs and was hiding in the utility closet.

How do I know all this, you ask, being as I am in fact just an old storyteller standing around in the dark outside a soup kitchen? Well might you ask. See if you can figure out an answer. Give it a good think. Chew on it, as it were, maybe you’ll get a flavour of the truth.

I asked you a question at the beginning of my story. Do you remember? I asked you if you’d heard about the Bleckker. You hadn’t. But what about now? Do you hear that? Sirens. Lots of them. The Bleckker Estate is burning down, you see. That’s what the squad did when they couldn’t find Mr. Armand in his coffin.

Bit anticlimactic, isn’t it? I’m sure you were hoping for a tale of valiant carnage. A battle between good and evil, or at least a good staking. I’m sure those squad members were too. Still, they got over it quickly enough. Especially when they discovered all the fire exits locked and their way out cut off. Ah, you’re saying, but what about those outer walkways, all nicely covered by a concrete portico?

And you’d be right. Our plucky squad of home invaders did make it out of a neighbour’s window onto the walkway. Sadly for them it’s been a murky day. Barely any sun, and the overhang from the roof provides an excellent light block. Still, they might have made it if it wasn’t for the gas explosion in the neighbour’s flat. They really should have cut the gas before storming the place.

Terrible oversight and a great big boom. And of course, what with all the illegal neighbour murdering the squad had got up to on the patch, and it being February – silly-silly – the afternoon had worn into evening by that point. Too bad, such a shame. The flames were pretty though, from a safe distance at the bus stop, mind, and Bleckker One had been a horrible eyesore. Not too many people will be sorry to see it go.

What happened to Mr. Armand, you say? Do you really need to ask? He got away, of course. He always does. I believe I warned you that happens. An errant spark flies free. Disease always spreads. Shadows will run. The night will win. The lambs don’t recognise the lions anymore.

But where are my manners. Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Armand. Mr. Armand. But from the look on your face, you already knew that. I knew you’d get it in the end. And it is, of course, the end. But for now, won’t you join me for a drink?

The Rabbit Hole Volume 5: Just…Plain…Weird

My short story Sweet Summer Swimming is featured in the writers co-op latest anthology, The Rabbit Hole Vol. 5, now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble in ebook and print. Below is an extract from Sweet Summer Swimming, a tale of murderous jellyfish on the hunt!

There is no purpose, no will. No mind. The jellies float. They beach. They burn and they flounder. They feed and they sink back into the surf. They wait to be called home again. Some have fallen, some have multiplied. It matters not. They are jellyfish. There is no will. No mind. No wonder why.

There is only the tide, the spasm of sensation. The hook and the cry and the flail and the catch. There is the pulse and the propulsion, the sudden arrest, the split and the shatter. The sink and the swim.

They are come, they are go, they know not which. They are the jellies and they are here and they are gone. Time is immaterial when there is only the float.

The tide comes in and the jellies rise to meet it.

Interested in reading more of my weird and creepy stories? The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear a collection of ten horror-fantasy tales is available on Amazon

Short Story – Collier Lads Forevermore

This story recently won 2nd Place in the Writer’s Magazine “Tight Situation” short story comp. It is published on the website HERE along with judges comments.

You that breathe the upper air don’t know this but what we have here is what us lads in the trade call a tight situation. Well, gentle sirs and ladies fair, in all honesty, the lads around me are calling it lot of other things, none of which I’d repeat to a minister, if you catch my meaning? And begging your pardon for the vulgarity. But the situation is a mite precarious. You see the Davy Lamp’s a-flickering blue but the blasted trapper’s only gone and jammed the trap, ain’t he? That’s us done for, most likely. Stuck in this shaft when the fire-damp burns us all up. Then its kingdom come and an appointment at the Pearly Gates.

How little you know, walking o’er my head, how we get on below. We are all here, trapped in the dark. The drawers, the cutters, and the blasted mule. Up the shaft a ways, I can hear the trapper bleating. He’d better not waste his breath on complaints or by God, my last act on this Earth shall be walloping the little blighter. One job he’s got. Open the trap for the loads and seal it up again while we work. The lad’s only gone and fouled it up. Samuel’s youngest, the nipper’s all of ten now and should be used to the pit ways.

Sam’s elder boys, Jim and Georgey, took to the life well. Least ways they did ‘til the Pit did for them last year. Explosion took my John, too. God rest his sweet soul. You’ve no mind for what our toil costs us, sirs. Your copper warming pan has my boy’s blood on it. Now Sam’s missus draws for us, though lord knows how long that’ll last with the way Sam clouts her about. She’s slow, he says, and I reckon rightly that he’s speaking truth, but she’ll get no faster after a knock to the noggin. 

I can tell you’re wondering about our situation. You’ll be wanting the specifics, I wager. Well, if you hadn’t clocked already, I reckon Sam and his boys and the missus will soon be a family altogether again. I’ll be seeing my John once the mine-damp’s blown through. It’s always hot as hell down here and black as the grave, but the Davy Lamp’s done its job. It warned us of the foul gasses massing, but that’s precious little use if we’re sealed away down here like the already dead.

A blast of air might dissipate the mass, like clearing out the shaft’s humours, if you will, but air we don’t have and the tiniest spark could spring the mine-fire on us.

Do me a favour, good sirs and gentlewomen, and think of our Sam and my John next you take your coffee from that shiny pot or set to asking the servants to polish that there brass candlestick. That shiny stuff came from some deep mine, much like this one. A miner does what he can, you see, to get you stuff for your tea kettle, your pots and your pans. Deep as the sea, the shiny was got by me and mine. Remember that next you take your repast. I dare say you’ll think no more of me elsewise.  

I worry about my Molly, I must confess. I forbid her to come down the pit, you see, and glad I am for that bit of foresight, but what’s to come of her and the girls when I’m gone? The pit’s done well for me, I’ll not lie. Twenty years of toil and before it all I had scant two clean shirts to call my own. Now we’ve a roof o’er head and food for the table. That’ll end not long ‘ere I’m gone. Sirs, you’d not countenance to see your pretty girls lining up for soup, but if I don’t work, they don’t eat and if I don’t live, well, let’s just say my prayers in this tight spot, ain’t for me.

Collier lads forevermore. If I had a penny now, I’d make a wish, and it wouldn’t be for another gill. Or perhaps it would. No sense in sobriety in this tight spot, one might say. There’s some lads here, the old heads who’ve breathed in the miasma of the pit a mite too long, who keep to working. Spark what may. Doing what they can, with might and skill, as the song tells it.

What difference does it make to us what we do, good sirs and gracious ladies? We’ll either live to breathe upper air or we’ll know paradise, sure enough. Me, I’d sooner take the rest for my aching back. The preacher’s say I’ll eat pie in the sky when I die, but me? I’d sooner make sure I’ve got some strength in case Heaven demands more of me than I can give.

One of the drawers has scuttled up the shaft to see what can be done. Though how she thinks she’ll get around the cart lodged there, I don’t know. Still, Ellie, she’s a sharp lass. Edward Scanlon’s girl. She took up the girdle when his heart gave out. Someone’s got to put food on the family’s table and her brother only went to war. You’ll forgive me for saying this, but what’s the use of dying to French musket fire if your sister’s left drawing for men like us?

Ellie might have made a good marriage, lived to see her hands go soft and smooth. Now she’s complaining she’s gone bald where her head knocks against the loads. But that’s the price the pit asks. Hauling’s not light work and the toil takes its toll. We’re working close to hell here. And don’t we know it.

Gert Scanlon will be in bind just like my Mol, ‘ere this is all over. No sons to pick up the slack. Gert’s health is not so good. She’ll not long last, I reckon. Begging your pardon for my frankness, but as a man about to die, I find my patience near its end. The newspapers will be all over another fire down here. They had a picture of the last emblazoned across the Gazette’s front page. Sam’s missus weren’t none too impressed when they got her boy’s names wrong. But that’s the way of the world, ain’t it? You that walk above only notice us below when the ground goes boom and shakes to all Heaven. You only care when the bodies come up instead of the shiny you want.

I was working during the last blow out. Down another shaft. Scarpered as soon as one of the trapper’s gave a warning yelp. We sealed up the deuced shaft as quick as we could. Them that were down there were already dead. The air turns to fire, you see. Like drowning in flame, it is. The fire-damp earns its name. Nasty stuff. You can’t smell it as everything stinks down here. We men sweat. We relieve ourselves as we must. Apologies to the ladies, I’m sorry for speaking coarse, but its true. If it weren’t for the Davy Lamp, the flame dancing high, its heart flickering blue, we’d have no warning at all that the air, what little there is, has turned on us.

The devil take young Sam Jnr. I’d grown to hope I might see forty. I had a dream of working my way up to overman one day. We all hate the overman we got, mind, but he gets five and sixpence just for riding up and down all day, and what man who works his muscles to wasting cutting don’t want that? I’ve given the best years of my life to the pit and, yes, gentle sirs and madams, she’s given me back a fair deal, it’s true, but I’ve a family to think of. I’d soon as not give the pit my life as well.

We’ve doused the lamps. We know what’s lurking in the dark with us. There’s no need to feed it. The air we breathe is rancid. If them up the shaft don’t get the trap open, we’ll all smother, fire-damp or no. Ah, but if I’d had another penny last week, I’d have saved it for my girls. Should I live, good sirs, kind ladies, hand on heart, with God my witness, I’ll go Temperance League and no word of a lie. I’ll put my pennies to use paying our way out of this life.

But, sirs, I’ll surely miss the lads. Collier lads forevermore. The dust gets in your veins, it speckles the skin, digging deeper than dirt; it turns a man’s heart to lead, to copper, or coal. The poison may change, but the truth does not. A collier is a collier and you that walk o’er our heads can’t know what it is to brave hard knocks to rend stubborn rocks. Or tempt the fate of a hellish roasting.

The mule is getting antsy. Things will go poorly if the creature bolts. We’re in a tight enough situation here, without the mule bucking. There’s not enough room to swing a cat and us lads are here with the mule, the cart, the chains and our picks, breathing in the air in lusty mouthfuls, as if we can swig it all down and starve the mine-fire out of it.

The Stinson lad is breathing too quick. He’s new to the mine and the dark’s yet to seep into his being. He don’t know our ways. He’ll swoon right out. I can hear the clank and slither of the cart chains, hooking on the ground, like the rattling of old ghosts. Is that you, John? Come home at last.

Somewhere above us is a cart, stuck halfway. The drawers won’t hold it up long. Today’s yield was a good one. The cart is heavy. That’s why we called for the mule to drag up the next one. When it drops, we’ll be crushed. Ah, sirs, an embarrassment of riches has befallen us poor collier lads. It seems death has come to us three ways: fire, suffocation or crushed by the weight of our labours. A very tight situation, you might say.

Interested in reading more of my weird and creepy stories? The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear a collection of ten horror-fantasy tales is available on Amazon

Haunt Anthology – Out Now

My short story One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile Teeth is featured in Haunt anthology from Dragon Soul Press available on Amazon. Below is an extract from One-Eyed Queens and Crocodile teeth.

They say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. But you say bollocks to that, don’t you Cheryl? You’ve never had much time for kings. Nor men, for that matter. And seeing? Well, the blind don’t know how lucky they are.

Your problem’s always been the same. You’ve always seen too much. You see it all. The twisted bodies of the sprites that jump from tree branch to tree branch in a storm. The faces in the wind and the shadows at the periphery of the brightest day. You see the darkness and the darkness sees you.

But you managed. For years, you managed. You were nimble, you were tough; you saw it all and you asked no questions. Monkey sees, but Monkey don’t talk. You survived. You thrived. You were the one-eyed queen in the dark.

You cleaned house for the monsters, learning the lesson of every soul that’s ever been weak amid the strong and the mean; when you can’t fight and you can’t run, be useful. And you were. When wicked old Mr. Watkins guilt came for him, you were there, wiping the tiny finger trails off the windowpanes and ignoring the way the condensation ran like tears.

You spritzed and you squirted, you wiped it all away, but the fingers lingered, scraping invisible patterns over the pane as you turned your back.

When the shadows in the room sniffled and pawed at the smudgy walls, when the reek of ammonia and terror clogged your nose, you whipped out the polish until the room smelled like an orange grove in Andalucía. You scrubbed the walls until they shone like ivory. You swept trapped sobs from between the slats of the Venetian blinds and let them drift as dust to the carpet before you got the Dyson out.

When the cupboard doors rattled in the toy maker’s workshop, you kept your head down and never opened the doors. You never looked into the weeping eyes of all those little wind-up boys and girls with their too life-like faces. ‘Cuz you knew what you’d see.  But nothing gets the stink of evil out of the air, does it, Cheryl? Nor stops fear from leaking into the floorboards or terror from rising up the walls like black rot.

Though you surely tried, didn’t you?

If you would like to read more of my work you can find my horror-fantasy short story collection The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear on Amazon

Short Story – Whiplash Road

(Whiplash Road won 2nd Prize in Writer’s Magazine “Journey” Short Story Comp. Find Entry and Judges Comments HERE)

Your feet are wet. Your body cold. Your neck hurts. The road is dark; rain glitters on the asphalt, studding the blacktop with a million broken stars of light. Night chill pinches your bare arms. You look down the stretch of road in front and behind you, watching for a car. You need a ride and you’ve lost your phone.

You walk along the grass verge, heels clasped in your hand. Stupid, stupid Tessa. You should’ve gone home with Jason. It’s not like the fight was that bad. Now you’re stuck out here alone in the dark. And the wet. And the cold.

You’ve ruined your dress. There’s mud all up your legs. Your hair is a complete mess. You’re cold. Really cold. Did I mention that? And as for your neck? You’ve only gone and wrenched it bad, haven’t you? The back of your scalp’s all tingly, like icy needles are pricking through your skin and spilling melt water down your neck.

It’s been a horrible evening. Which is a crying shame because you were really looking forward to the dance. Retro, it was. A proper old-time bop. You did up your hair in victory rolls and your lips are fire engine red. Your skirt is out to here. Such a good find in the charity shop. You were so chuffed when you found it. Actually, you were feeling really special when the evening started. Then Jason had to ruin it.

Couldn’t stop whining about the footie. Couldn’t get into the swing of things and throw you over his shoulders and through his legs like a supportive boyfriend should when Ella’s playing. Then he went on and on about how everything has to be your way and you never want to do any stuff he likes. Well, obviously. Jason’s boring. All he wants to do is watch sports and play video games. And not with you, neither. Not after that hissy fit about the highest score and a certain someone’s power up bonus. 

Look, you tried to share his passions. You really did. Ask anyone. They’d all agree. You were completely committed to gaming nights with him. It’s not your fault you were a better player after three weeks than he was after three years.

It was dumb though, refusing Jason’s offer to drive you home. And the funny thing is you can’t remember much about the argument now. Or how you got out here. Wherever here is. It’s like the middle of nowhere or something. Really creepy. The trees are all pointy and shaggy; firs, you think. An owl is hooting. There should be a full moon. And a witch flying past on a broomstick. Instead, there’s rain sheeting down and you’ve got an awful crick in your neck.

It’s the cold that’s the worst. You are so cold, Tessa. Scary cold. Sleepy too. You feel all loose and weird. Like nothing connects quite right. Floaty, almost. Maybe you’ve got hyperthermia? You should be feeling all sorts of nasty stuff under your feet. Dirt and stone and maybe even broken glass. But all you really feel is the cold and the wet and the dark.

Yeah, the dark. Seems strange, doesn’t it? That darkness should have a texture and a weight, but you can feel it. It sticks to you like tiny burrs, rolling up in your skin and rubbing bits of you away as you walk.

Suddenly there is light. It fills your world. You move like you’re in a dream, stepping out into the road like a nitwit right in front of an approaching car. There’s a moment as the car bears down and the light consumes you, burning through your eye sockets and lighting up the darkness inside your skull that memory tingles.

There was another car, wasn’t there Tessa? It’s engine a roar; its lights so bright. You tried to flag it down. The driver didn’t you see. He couldn’t have seen you. Or he would have stopped, wouldn’t he?

This one stops. Driver’s window slides down with a soft hum. An elbow on the door, a face in the dark. ‘Where are you headed?’

Where are you headed, Tessa? It’s been a long night, walking the road. You’re cold. Can you remember?

Words are a long time coming. You don’t sound like yourself. Your voice is as cold and as lost as you feel. ‘Edenbury Avenue, Little Forthay.’

A smile. ‘I know Little Forthay. It’s on my way home. Get in.’

You get in the back. The upholstery is fuzzy. The car is clean and dry. It should be warm but you’re cold. You look out of the window as the car starts. The darkness clings to the glass, smearing it with slithers of rain.

‘You mind if I listen to the radio?’

You say nothing. You’re sleepy. The seat’s headrest puts pressure on your neck. The back of your skull feels wet and slippery. You watch the world go by.

‘That’s some party frock you’ve got there. Fancy dress, is it? Near scared me to death when I saw you. Thought you were a ghost or something.’

You’re starting to get travel sick. Your skin feels tight over your bones. Your neck throbs and cold stabs your heart. You have a strange feeling, as if a great hook is lodged in your chest and with every mile the car eats up you feel an invisible rope draw taut.

‘What were you doing out on Old Fork Road at this time of night?’ the driver berates you in fatherly tones. ‘It’s not safe. The Council should put in streetlights. There are too many accidents. In fact, there was a nasty hit-and-run only last week. A young girl. Hitchhiker, just like you. You just can’t be too careful these days.’

A sharp wrench. A painful yank. Bright lights flare in front of your eyes. Pressure slams into your chest. You taste copper on your tongue. The driver twists to look into the back seat. The rope hauls you back. Your neck snaps forward.

You’re back on the road. Your feet are wet. Your body cold. Your neck hurts. Your chest feels like an empty cavern. The rain has stopped. The moon is out. No witches, though. You walk along the verge, shoes in your hand. Your dress shines white.  You need a ride and you’ve no one to call. The darkness seeps in through your pores. It weighs you down. You can’t feel your feet. You watch the road for lights.

‘Where are you headed?’ the driver asks. Is he the second? The third? You can’t remember, Tessa. Why can’t you remember?

‘Edenbury Avenue. Little Forthay.’

The car is cramped and dirty and the inside smells like oil. There is a blackened banana peel on the back seat and a dirty t-shirt on the floor. You slip in without disturbing the crisp packets underfoot. You can’t tell if it is warm or not. What even is warm? Whatever it is, you’re not it, Tessa. You’re cold as night. Cold as the road. Your chest feels tight already. Your head hurts terribly.

‘That’s a pretty dress,’ the driver leers through the rear-view mirror.

You watch the world go by. Everything is silver gilded and cold. The hook in your chest digs a bit deeper. You can feel the pull of the road. The night. The darkness.

‘Not much of a talker, are you? Here. I’ve got an idea. Why don’t I pull over and you come sit up front with me? Warm you up a bit, eh?’

The driver turns. The rope pulls taut. Your neck snaps forward. Bright lights. Pain. Copper on your tongue.

You are back on the road. Your body is cold. Your neck hurts. You can’t feel your feet. You walk along the verge. You wait. The darkness fills your chest. You look for bright lights.

‘Where are you headed?’ the woman asks.

‘Edenbury Avenue. Little Forthay.’

The car is clean. A baby seat waits beside you. You wait for the snap, the pull, the agony. The darkness runs alongside you, keeping pace. The lady doesn’t talk much, but she watches, worry reflected in the rear-view mirror.

This time you make it all the way to Little Forthay. The luminous village sign welcomes you and warns you to drive carefully. Buildings rear up on each side of the road, pushing back against the dark. The road gives way to a roundabout. You start to hope.

‘Did you say Edenbury Avenue?’ the woman driver asks. ‘Isn’t that where they built the new crematorium?’

The hook gouges. The rope pulls taut. Your neck snaps forward.

You are back on the road. Your body is cold. Your neck hurts. There are flowers by your feet. Bouquets wrapped in cellophane. A sad little teddy bear. Water-logged cards gone pulpy and unreadable.

You walk along the verge. The darkness cocoons you. You need a ride. The road is long. You wait for lights in the darkness.

‘Where are you headed?’

The car is a van. You sit up front. The dashboard is covered in cigarette ash. The inside of the cab smells greasy. The driver puts his hand on your thigh. You don’t feel it. You look out of the window. You don’t see anything. The driver swerves and pulls over. He reaches for you.

The rope pulls. Your neck snaps. You are back on the road. Your body is cold. Your neck hurts. The flowers are gone and there is a streetlight standing tall in their place. Its light does not reach you. You walk along the verge and you wait for someone to take you home.

Interested in reading more of my weird and creepy stories? The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear a collection of ten horror-fantasy tales is available on Amazon